


I Have My Duty to Perform

by nogoaway



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Electricity, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, reenactment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 08:35:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7041037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nogoaway/pseuds/nogoaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John revisits an old memory with Harold's help.</p><p>N: This fic includes explicit scenes of torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have My Duty to Perform

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Долг в отношении войны](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8021698) by [Fandom Person of Interest 2016 (Fandom_Person_of_Interest_2014)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fandom_Person_of_Interest_2014/pseuds/Fandom%20Person%20of%20Interest%202016), [Madoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi)



> Warning: This is torture fic: it is fic about torture, and it describes torture in detail. Although the situation is consensual, Harold tortures John in this fic. This is not SSC or RACK. Please don't read this if you suspect the material will be upsetting to you. In addition to explicit torture this fic includes mention of rape, and makes references to historical events involving genocide, state violence, and human experimentation.
> 
>  
> 
> Title is taken from a letter of Wilfred Owen:
> 
> "I am sorry you have disturbing and daylight-lingering dreams. It is possible to avoid them: by proper thinking before sleep. I confess I bring on what few war dreams I now have, entirely by willingly considering war of an evening. I do so because I have my duty to perform towards War." --Feb 18. 1918

"Psychologically speaking," Harold says, at exactly 11:00 pm, "it makes a great deal of sense."

John is staring at the clock. The digits tick over, leave '10:59' glowing pinkly under his eyelids. Something cold and sharp runs down his back like a blade. He had allowed himself to think that it was over; that Harold would never bring it up again, and they didn't have to ever talk about it. Two months. Harold hasn't breathed a word in two months, and John really should know by now, shouldn't he, that two months of silence on a subject did not mean that said subject was closed, but only that Harold was doing _research_.

"Don't tell me there's 'scientific literature'," John says, once the clock hits 11:03 and it's become painfully obvious that he can neither escape nor expect Harold to pick up the conversational slack, "I won't believe you."

"No. I think experiments of that sort would be frowned upon." Harold shifts next to John in the dark, carefully contained on his side of the bed. "Even if the intention was to heal. Of course, when the goal is to develop some new and efficient way to _harm_ , neither money nor morality is any object." John can feel him staring. "Holmesburg Prison, MKULTRA, Harlow's Pit of Despair-- we live in an unbearable age."

John's automatic snark about appropriate pillow talk dies in his throat. Instead he says, "war has always been like that."

"Perhaps you're right," Harold says, with a tone that means he vehemently disagrees, but loves John enough to put aside what is undoubtedly a long and unpleasant argument for a later date "However, it is only recently that the effects of trauma on the human psyche have been carefully studied."

John shrugs. He really, really dislikes that word.

"You might be interested to know that prisoners of war and survivors of torture exhibit symptom constellations more closely aligned with those of domestic violence survivors and abused children than of other combat veterans. The prolonged and interpersonal nature of captivity experiences can result in a more complex post-traumatic reaction."

"Makes sense," John admits.

"Accordingly--" and Harold clears his throat, fidgets with a hush of bed linens and pajamas "accordingly, management of such reactions requires-- a certain respect for each individual's experience. A tolerance for responses that are not 'standard'. Even ones that are-- that seem-- counter-intuitive."

"I don't need 'managing'," John sighs.

"I know. A poor choice of words. I apologize."

John huffs softly into his folded arms. The clock is hanging at 11:11. "I know you've probably read enough on whatever this is to get a higher degree in it, Harold, but you don't need to unleash your next dissertation on me. Just say what you need to say."

Finch is silent for so long that John is beginning to wonder whether he offended Harold by accident. He's tensing to roll over and assess the damage when Harold says, "I think we should do it. I think it would help."

John does roll over. Harold is staring directly at him, glasses off and eyes bright and earnest in the dark. "Excuse me?"

"I admit to being-- unsettled, at first." Harold nods a little against his stiff pillow. "But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made."

John can only stare, because it sure as hell doesn't make sense to _him_.

"It's a do-over," Harold explains. "A controlled, a safe, re-experiencing. A chance to have power in a situation that once rendered you powerless. It makes perfect sense, John. It's-- you want to slay the dragon, if you'll permit the metaphor--"

"No," John says, before he can stop himself. "That's not it at all. I'm sorry. I never should have mentioned it."

"John--"

"That's not how it is." The air above the bed feels warm, heavy-- he's sat up too fast. The room sways. His heart is pounding, something like anger, like frustration, not with Harold (never with Harold), but with himself, for being like this. For being so far from good, so far even from _decent_ in every conceivable category, every possible direction. "Just forget it, all right?" John pulls himself upright with one hand on the dresser for balance, clutching the wood so tightly it imprints carved rosettes into his palm.

"I can't do that."

"Why?"

"Because you mentioned it." Harold struggles to sit up against the headboard, squinting at him. John hates himself even more at the sight of it, Harold with his stiff back forcing his body into painful motions just to stay at eye level with John, John who shouldn't even be _seen_ by decent people, John who wishes he were back in the gutter where he belongs, draining all his hideous, black blood into the street. "Because you trusted me with it, John, and it's _hurting_ you."

John bites back _i trust you with everything_ , because it is a lie, and _plenty of things hurt me_ , because it is true. "It's not like that."

"How is it like, then?"

"I don't know," John says. It's a compassionate lie. The kind good people never have to tell.

Harold just waits, outlined in the pale pink glow of the digital clock.

John should leave. He could get pants on and out the door and down the street before Harold could follow him. The elevator in his building is broken, the stairs would slow Finch down. He should run. He should run and hide himself away and--

"I wasn't powerless." The words fall out of his mouth like stones, one after another, he can't seem to stop them. Something about Harold on the bed in the dark without his glasses, knowing he's nothing to Harold just now but a grim, faceless shape. "I wasn't powerless. Sixteen hours and I didn't even tell them my _name_."

"I know."

He doesn't. He _can't_ , and isn't that a blessing. "I could have made it stop. I could have told them, and it would have stopped."

"John."

"Sixteen hours and at any second of it, I could have made it stop. I had _absolute_ power," John says, suddenly numb. "So you see, that's not how it is at all."

"John," Harold says, reaching out. "Please come back to bed."

John stares down the length of his own body in the dark, huge and rough and built for breaking other, smaller bodies. It's going on midnight. He may as well be the monster in Harold's closet.

"I didn't even cry," he confesses, secure in the knowledge that Harold cannot understand this, has no reason to, thank _god_ "I pissed myself, you can't help that. But I didn't cry. I just waited. They teach you to wait. I never even considered saying a word."

John watches Harold's throat bob as he swallows. He never should have mentioned this. What had he been thinking, letting this part of himself out into the fresh, lovely new world Harold has given him? It's ungrateful. Offensive. But of course John is fundamentally indecent, no matter how hard he tries to be good.

"It's all right," Harold says, softer now "It's going to be all right."

"I'm going for a run," he decides, and grabs a pair of sweatpants from the drawer before closing the door behind him.

* * *

 

He doesn't see Harold for four days. It works out as if it were coincidence-- it's number after number and Finch is already staked out in an internet cafe or breaking into an apartment by the time John makes it to the library-- but John knows that's not the case. Harold would make time for him, if he wanted to. Apparently, he doesn't want to.

John does his job as usual, and tries not to mope. Even without Harold in the room he can feel the unresolved thing in between them, growing staler and staler, more and more brittle. Like a callous growing around a splinter; soon the avoidance will be more of an obstacle to its removal than the wound itself. That's how the best relationships die, he knows-- a thousand pinpricks too healed over, until everything between two people is calcified with scabs. He still prefers the slow death with Harold to anything with anyone else; nothing good is permanent, but John is going down with this particular ship. He doesn't know how not to.

On Saturday at 7am, Harold is at his desk like nothing unusual has happened. He takes the tea when John offers it, and doesn't shrug away when John brushes a kiss to his forehead.

There's no number, so John heads to the latest stack of books to pick out something to read-- it's a new habit of his, choosing reading material from number stacks. Social security numbers result in an appealingly randomized sample of the library's contents.

He settles on a 1969 anthology of academic papers on sequelae of psychic trauma (Massive, Hotel, Kilo), simply because the other choices do not pique his curiosity. And maybe, honestly, because John is slightly perverse. In any event, this turns out to be a mistake, because Harold turns to him around noon and says, in an absolutely usual voice, devoid of inflection or disgust: "I still think we should try."

John looks up from a case study of a Dachau survivor, feeling even more like a piece of ungrateful shit than usual.

"Fine," he says. "Sure."

* * *

 

Nothing happens for thirty-six hours. John works, he eats, he goes home with Harold, falls asleep with Harold, and wakes up in a place he doesn't recognize, with his hands bound above his head.

He struggles at first, disoriented. The bonds don't budge. He's scanning the room for something to make use of when he spies Harold, sitting sedately in an armchair not five yards from him.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," John jokes, and sinks back down onto the bed. Not a bed, really-- a bed frame. It's sturdy, but not much else-- the kind of thing he'd expect to find in an abandoned hospital or a prison, just an old steel box lined with vertical springs that dig into his naked back, probably leaving smears of rust. It's familiar. Everything about the room is eerily familiar, from the bare cinder block walls to the cracked plaster ceiling, the bare bulb buzzing faintly. The smell-- he can't place it. Underground, maybe, or mildew--

His heart speeds up. His palms sweat. He clenches his arms again, just to make sure-- no give. His ankles are likewise immobile, but he can see them, at least; thick leather straps.

Harold crosses one leg over the other, watching him. The armchair is out of place-- clean, not dusty, upholstered with soft looking, deep red fabric. But everything else-- the light, the smell, the walls, the hum of the bulb; it's _perfect_. He half expects to hear muffled shouts in Pashto from outside, half expects to see a curl of cigarette smoke from the guard by the door, half expects to smell--

But he _is_ smelling it, he realizes, under the scent of dampness-- Kahwah tea, a thick blend of leaves, cardamom, honey and saffron.

A chill runs from his nail-beds to his feet. How did Finch know? How did he--?

"John," Harold says, putting down his mug, and John snaps back like a rubber band, suddenly entirely calm, entirely present. "This is your chance to say no. You have five minutes."

John considers the crack in the ceiling, the spiderwebs glittering in a curtain around the bulb. "How did you--"

"More light reading of classified DOD files and VA personnel records than I am willing to admit," Harold says. "Four minutes and thirty seconds."

"And if I--" John swallows. It's real, all of a sudden, terrifyingly real and heavy and immediate, like a boulder on top of his chest. "If I don't say no?"

"Then I have you for the next sixteen hours."

John exhales shakily, dropping his head back onto the springs. They creak in protest, catch stray stands of his hair and tug. He'd forgotten that part; next to the real pain it didn't even qualify as an annoyance. He breathes, and breathes, but can't seem to slow it down.

He can hear Harold picking the teacup up again, taking a slow sip. Then another noise; a box opening.

John glances over at him. Harold is resting something on his lap, a long metal stick.

"It's called a picana," Harold informs him. "A high voltage, low amperage device similar to a cattle prod. You have two minutes."

John knows what it is. It's not what they used on him in Kandahar, but he's seen it used before, in Bolivia. Kara had stuck him with it once, as a joke. It was like the electrodes, but less distributed. Sharper in a smaller place. One touch had sent him to the ground for over a minute.

"Ninety seconds," Harold says.

"Get on with it," John gasps, but Harold just shakes his head.

John clenches his teeth, closes his eyes. Tries to breathe. He's scared, he realizes. He's afraid. It's been so long since he was truly afraid, at least for himself--

"Sixty seconds."

He hears Harold get up; more rusting, a shuffling step, and then there's something slithering over his chest. He opens his eyes. Harold is standing over him, holding a thick leather restraint belt. He looks--

John's heart thuds heavily, painfully, just below his throat. Why won't Harold hurry up, will he just _hurry up_ before John-- before John--

"You have ten seconds," Harold warns, and cinches the belt tight, locking John to the frame. Another belt loops around his ribs, and then a third over his stomach.

John digs his fingernails into his palms, as tight as he can. He's sweating, but his limbs feel cold.

"Time," Harold whispers, and leans down to kiss John's forehead, brushing a hand over his heart. "Last chance."

The hot wave of anger surprises him. It's old anger, stale anger, for and of someone else. He doesn't realize what he's done until Harold reaches one delicate hand up to his own face, wiping away John's spit.

"For the record," Harold says, unfailingly calm, "that was not necessary."

Then he straightens up, returns to the chair, and removes his tie. John watches, gritting his teeth.

The first touch of the rod to his ribs punches the breath out of him. He feels his spine lock up as he jerks against the bonds. It takes a moment for him to register the pain, and then it's there.

He'd forgotten, how much it hurts. He has nightmares about this with some frequency, thinks about it often, and yet he'd forgotten. Nothing hurts quite like this. It's a simple, direct, and blistering jolt of pain-- it doesn't spread like a blow, or ache like a broken bone, or oscillate like a burn. It's just pain: blunt, heavy, so immediate and overwhelming that his body denies it for a second, unsure how to process.

Even if his body forgets, though, John knows what to do. Breathe. Wait. Breathe. Remain in control. He slides into it like a familiar coat, pulls it around himself and turns up the collar.

He remembers being this man. He remembers this place. He's had lots of practice.

"Is that so," Harold says, sounding almost curious. The two-pronged tip of the rod lifts off John's skin, leaving a tingling patch, like when his leg falls asleep. Then it touches down on the soft inside of his left thigh.

John's leg jumps and twitches, trying to fold in on itself. His ankle, bound by the strap, rattles the bed-frame.

"The adductor longus," Harold muses. "The human musculo-skeletal system is very much like a machine. The mind is generally considered less so, but I suspect that is only because we have yet to design models capable of approximating its degree of complexity."

"What about your machine?" John asks, through his teeth. At this rate, he's going to break his ankle. He wonders if Harold will stop, when he does.

"I didn't say you could talk," Harold says, and whips the prod around to touch the fleshy curve at the back of John's knee.

_the man jerks his legs apart with rough hands, presses something hard and small behind john's knee-- cold, and smaller around than a dime. the man at the head of the bed-frame slaps him across the face. john goes limp to reduce risk of injury to his neck._

_something clinks and scrapes, metal on metal somewhere below him, the springs of the bed-- no_

_a word-- "another"? "the other"? insulated wire falls across his thigh, his stomach. the man leans over him, his arm stretched out. the second thing touches him on the chest. idiotic, he thinks-- too close to his heart, they'll kill him. he's going to die because these amateurs don't know how to--_

_he doesn't feel it for a second, and then he does._

John screams, not so much from the pain itself, but from the combined echo of memory, and the sudden certainty that Harold _isn't_ going to stop. He can smell the tea again, on Harold's-not-Harold's breath, and John has a scar there, a little circle the size of an electrode, Harold is touching him _right there-_ -

"Interesting," Harold says. "And that's only your fibular nerve. I wonder--"

The prongs nestle up under John's penis, and he has a moment to register the coldness of the metal before he's blacking out.

* * *

 

He wakes up to a stronger tea smell and something wet on his stomach and leg. His teeth hurt, and his muscles ache from straining against the frame.

"You can tell me your name, if you want," Harold suggests from the chair. He's holding a bronze teakettle with steam coming out of the spout. "I might give you some water if you do."

John just stares, taking the moment of respite to try and lower his heart rate. It isn't working.

"The thing is, John," Harold says, setting the teakettle down on the floor, "that there's nothing you can tell me that I don't already know." He wipes his hands on his kerchief, almost absently. John feels an odd twinge of satisfaction at the idea of Harold's hands sweating. "And since it's unlikely that anything I do to you here will result in permanent injury--"

He picks up the picana again, waving it in John's direction. "There's really nothing you can say to make this stop."

John forces himself to scoff. Ham handed of Harold, to play his cards so early like that. Doesn't he know that revealing more information is only going to give John more control?

"Electric charge travels through the body via the most direct and efficient route, usually blood vessels, one prong to the other," Harold says, eyeing the prod. "Although substantially more painful than other methods, this device actually has a lower risk of serious damage, since the area of the body effected is so reduced."

"Taking notes from Kohl, Finch?" John wonders, and swears he catches a glimpse of a glare before Harold's face smooths out again. He'd always wondered if Harold was listening in on that particular conversation.

"Of course, it also enables the user to target sensitive areas very effectively," Harold continues, ignoring him. The wand touches the sole of John's left foot, and his leg jumps and twists, his toes curling so sharply that he swears he hears bone crack. He digs his head back into the springs, gulping air. He feels nauseous. He's at least twisted something-- when the prongs move away he can feel his ankle throbbing.

"And the application of current to more conductive substances, such as, well," Harold's mouth twists a little. " _Urine_ , can amplify the effect."

John braces himself for the shock to the pool of piss on his stomach, but instead the prod finds his left elbow, and the unexpectedness of it rocks him before the pain hits. He doesn't try to keep from screaming. Knowing Harold, this place is soundproof and far enough off the beaten path that no one will hear him.

And _god_ , that hurts, all the way down his arm and through his wrist, up to his nail beds.

"Focus on that," Harold suggests, and then touches the wand to John's stomach.

He'd forgotten this, too, and it comes flooding back in an instant-- the pain, the humiliation of it. The shame washes over him as his stomach and thigh erupt in searing heat, like he's been splashed with acid. He swears his skin is burning. He can smell his skin burning, no, that's--

_goat cooking in the next room, the smell of bubbling fat wafting through a ratty bead curtain, they kicked the woman and her two children out to bring him here, the whole village is empty, no one is coming, no one is coming--_

_the youngest one speaks english but doesn't want to be there. he looks scared and sad and hesitates to ask john questions. it doesn't matter, they know that john knows enough pashto, even if his mind, drunk and scattered by pain, skips over words sometimes--_

_they're laughing at him. it takes him a minute to realize why. he's pissed on himself. his first thought is, oh, that makes sense. and then, dane will see. he doesn't know, exactly, why the thought of that makes him want to die, but all he can think about is dane and stevenson bursting in to find him here, and instead of freeing him, joining in with the laughter. stevenson asking john if it's his first time. dane smirking. "rangers don't piss themselves, johnny-boy"._

_'this is part of it,' he reminds himself. 'this is part of how it's done.' they do it, too-- he's seen those photos coming out of baghdad. it's standard procedure. he pictures the manual in his mind; psychological techniques, section 9, paragraph 2. suggested countermeasures--_

"Thirsty?" Harold wonders, brushing a hand over John's forehead, smoothing back his sweaty hair. The tenderness of it makes his throat tight. John swallows again and again with his dry mouth, every inch of him either aching or tingling. He wonders what time it is.

"You should sit down," he rasps.

Harold's eyebrows quirk up in skeptical unison. "That's not an answer." He touches the wand delicately to John's nipple, immensely painful and lasting only a fraction of a second. "If you're thirsty--"

John grits his teeth. Waits.

"You're not making this easy on either one of us," Harold notes, and sticks John in the thigh again, not a particularly sensitive area but he holds the rod there until John's rattled the bed-frame a good few inches along the floor just by virtue of his thrashing.

It keeps on like that for hours. John greys in and out, his throat raw from screaming. He is absolutely certain he's broken both of his wrists.

After a while-- he's not sure how long, his internal clock is disoriented by the blackout and there aren't any windows-- Harold breaks to have another cup of tea. When he returns to the bed, he hovers the wand over John's groin, and John says, because it doesn't actually matter, "My name is John Reese."

"That's nice," Harold says, and taps the head of John's cock with the prongs. "It's not, though."

John can't breathe, can't see. He's nowhere for a second, and then he's in Kandahar, and then he's somewhere in between here and there, pain layered over pain and fear over fear, the old certainty that _he is going to die_ tangled up with _Harold is not going let him die_. He can't get them unstuck from each other, it's that fucking smell, the fucking tea--

_the samovar was on the counter when they came in. he can see it through the curtain. it's copper, a design on the side, like script letters. he focuses on it as they take turns with his hands and feet, trying to make out the words._

_when he swallows something pulls taut against his throat-- thin, like a string-- but no--_

_the guard by the door is watching them with a bored expression. the smoke from his cigar mixes with the steam from the tea, swirls above john's head like a cloud. he's drifting on a cloud of pain. he's waiting. all he has to do is wait. he's trained for waiting. he's good at waiting. all he has to do is--_

He jerks back like he's been dunked in cold water. Harold's hand is on his face, stroking his cheek.

"Stop," John pleads, unable to reconcile the tenderness with the agony wracking his body. It's not fair. Harold keeps breaking his concentration with his-- with his Harold-ness. His patience and his soft touches and his utter, infuriating constancy, his fearlessnes, his acceptance of all the things in John that are unacceptable--

"No," Harold says.

"Sargent John Warren," John gasps, squeezing his eyes shut as it flies out of his mouth. Harold knows his real name already, it shouldn't feel like this-- like he's falling from something high. Like he's made some irreversible error, cut himself free of his tether and gotten swept off into the storm.

Harold hums, and goes back to forcing John's body into painful contortions. At this point, it feels like his very veins are on fire, every branching arm of them from his eyes to his fingertips to his toes. Like his lungs are caged in a lattice of molten lead.

When he can move his jaw, he pants, "you said you'd give me water."

"I did say that, didn't I?" Harold muses, and resumes his work.

John cries, then-- he hadn't realized he could, but there's no other word for the twin cold, wet lines tracing down from his eyes, over his cheeks, beads of ice seeking the floor. Something in him breaks open with it, what he thought was a ball of solid, tempered steel cracking like an egg.

He tells Harold _everything_ , babbling interspersed by screams. He can't stay on one subject-- his unit, what they were doing in Kandahar, the intel, his code words, his caches, pickup sites and radio frequencies, everything that was important on June 18, 2006-- and then he jumps, rocked to the present, and it's the machine, the numbers, John's address, his social, his bank account, Finch himself-- and in between, everything he knows at high levels of classification, every operative, every foreign leader, everyone announced dead who was really alive, everyone assumed alive who was actually dead. Operations in the Pacific, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe. In Western Europe. Things not even Harold could possibly know-- street gangs in league with drug lords in league with paramilitary groups in league with senators, industry moguls with dedicated phone lines, secret trade agreements. The traffic in cocaine, weapons, human beings. Black site locations. Black site procedures. Rumors about who has what chemical weapons. Press cover-ups and targeted killings. Everything John has ever glimpsed in passing, or heard through the grapevine, or cobbled together through scraps of disparate evidence.

"That's interesting," Harold says, sometimes, or "I see."

It goes on, and on, and on. John thinks he's still screaming, still spilling, but he can't hear himself. Air whistles through his throat, his lips shaking around useless words. 'Stop,' and 'please', and 'anything'.

Harold presses the wand to John's groin and holds it there, holds it there, makes him twitch and quiver and sob, seared and split open, spilling his guts like a fish.

"It's okay," he whispers, pressing his dry cheek to John's wet one. "It's not your fault. There's nothing you can do. It's not your fault."

Harold's skin on his is warm and soft, he smells like the library. His sleeve brushes John's side, crisp fine fabric, the cool ridge of a button. It hurts different from the shocks, different from his tortured wrists and ankles. It hurts like the present, like something new and bright and clean.

"It wasn't your fault," Harold says, and hurts him. "There was nothing you could have done."

* * *

  
John wakes up to Harold splinting his left wrist with damp fiberglass casting tape. It's neon-bright lime green, and completely out of place. He laughs-- or tries to. It's mostly air. His throat feels shredded and swollen.

Harold startles at the noise, and then smooths down the end of the tape with his thumbs. "Can you walk?"

John looks down the length of his body. The left ankle is splinted, too. "Okay."

Harold's brow furrows, but he stands up, offering John a hand. John has to brace his forearm against the bed-frame to push himself upright, and leans heavily into Harold all the way to the door, dragging his left leg. His right isn't doing so well, either.

Outside the room is-- oh. It's the Hunt's Point safe house. Clean, furnished, but not one of Harold's nicest properties. There are bars on the windows visible through the drawn curtains. The covers on the queen-sized bed are turned down, and John limps gratefully towards it.

"Easy," Harold suggests, helping to ease him down. "There you go."

Then he stretches out next to John and, completely ignoring the sweat and urine dried in a filmy mess over John's skin, pulls him into a full-body hug.

John clings, burrowing his face into Harold's chest. "I'm sorry," he rasps. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"

"Shh," Harold says, and pets the back of his head, smoothing the hair back into order over and over, slow and rhythmic. "It's all right. You didn't do anything wrong."

Harold's shirt is wrinkled now, soft from the strain of the day. There are stiff patches under his arms where he sweated, and John noses into them, breathing him in. It's 2013. He is in New York City. Harold is real.

"How long?" he asks Harold's armpit.

"Three hours and forty eight minutes," Harold replies from above his head. "I thought that was plenty."

"Oh," John says, and tries to think about that. Less than a quarter of sixteen. What does that mean? He can't come up with anything-- his mind is strangely blank, like a wiped drive, an infinite white space where the question echoes off into nothing. "That's. Less." But also more.

"Do you want to tell me?" Harold asks, combing gentle fingers through John's hair.

John opens his mouth, ready for the block to set in, the internal censor that keeps him from revealing the worst parts of himself to Harold. The barrier between John and decent people that he keeps himself hidden behind.

"We were scouting along the river at night," he says, closing his eyes. He can hear Harold's heartbeat just under his skin, much faster at rest than John's own, but steady. "It's slow in summer. You almost can't tell it's moving, unless you drop some paper or a twig in, or something. I could see the moon-- it was the first quarter. There were four of us. I was in the rear."

Harold hums encouragingly.

"Someone shouts up front-- twenty, twenty-five yards ahead of me. Serrano, at the front, he's got his leg stuck in something. I assume he just tripped; it's rocky, animals dig nests. But he starts yelling. Boyd tells him to be quiet. Someone clicks their headlamp on full bright. I stop where I am and turn to watch our rear. There's a shot. Two. From the north, across the river, but I can't figure out exactly where they are-- it's too flat, there's nowhere to hide."

"Someone fires back-- Boyd or Little. Little shouts for Boyd to shut his lamp off. I keep mine off and start wading across. They can't be far. I don't--" he frowns. Some of this he remembers perfectly, and some of it not very well at all. "I creep up the opposite bank. There are these ridges-- soft white stone, porous, and baked dirt. I crouch down and wait for them to shoot again. They do-- I see the muzzle flash and I aim and someone knocks me down, pulls something over my head. Jute bag, like you buy coffee or rice in. I elbow back but can't make contact, my pack is in the way. There's rope at the bottom of the bag, like a cinch closure, he's pulling it--"

John exhales slowly, trying to remember. It's hard to find words for some of it, too-- all he remembers about being taken is thrashing, and choking, and being fucking _annoyed_ about the pack. "There were three of them-- they got me onto a truck bed or something, before I passed out. I didn't hear anything from across the river except more shooting, in the wrong direction. I woke up in the truck, and when I tried to roll myself off one of them kicked me until I stopped. I could see a little through the weave of the jute, but it was dark. We drove to this village-- there were no lights, no people, no animals. The buildings were falling apart. The desert has been creeping up for decades and displacing people, but normally they take their belongings."

"There was one building with something bright on inside. A stove. A woman and two children were squatting there-- they ran when we came inside. I didn't see them again. I think the men said that they made it out, but I could have-- they talked too fast, sometimes. My Pashto wasn't great. But I didn't hear shooting."

"They drag me to the back and tie me down on a bed-frame. When they take the bag off I bite the one closest to me-- he hits me across the face. It's a two-room cinder-block house with a bead curtain dividing the kitchen and the bedroom-- there's a pot boiling on the stove. I can smell it."

"There's three of them, and then this teenager and an older man come in. His uncle I think. The room is too small for everyone, so the old man and the one I bit leave to go make tea. Another one stands by the curtain. The boy looks unhappy. They make him ask me questions in English, who am I, what are we doing out there, what is my name. They know I'm American, who cares about me at home? Do I have a family. What is my name. I don't say anything. The man by the curtain leaves for a few minutes and then comes back carrying something black and boxy by a handle. I can't see from where I'm tied down, I just assume it's a case."

"The boy apologizes to me and one of them starts cutting my pants off. I think, oh, I'm going to be raped. They'll probably untie my legs for that. The boy keeps apologizing, I'm sorry, what is my name, just tell him my name. His name is Saleh, he's sorry. I keep thinking, they should let the kid leave if they're going to do that to me, it's not right."

Harold lets out a shuddering breath and squeezes John's arm with his hand, lightly.

"The thing is--" John swallows. He wants to tell. He wants Harold to know _everything_. "The thing is, I'd already had that happen, back at school. So I just thought-- okay, this again. They don't know. They think I'll break over this. And it was almost funny." He shrugs. "I know that's-- not how you're supposed to feel about it. But I kind of wanted to laugh."

He can see Harold's jaw tighten, like he wants to interrupt, but then it relaxes.

"They cut my shirt off, I thought-- okay, not necessary, but maybe they're going for full humiliation. It doesn't seem real, really, it's like a game. I know I'll be okay. And then one of them picks up the case and drags it over and I see it's not a case, it's a battery, with cables folded on top. And I'm so caught up in what I think is about to happen, it doesn't even occur to me what that means."

Harold makes an inquisitive noise when John laughs. "I was so stupid then. I thought I was hot shit. I had no idea. I think about it sometimes and it's embarrassing-- just one bad decision after another, one wrong call after another. I should never have gone across the river. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted so badly to be good at my job that I forgot how to do it."

"That was why I didn't talk," he admits. "Because I couldn't do something so fucking stupid and then talk. And I was sure I was going to die. It hurt so bad I didn't understand why I wasn't dead yet. I thought they were going to kill me by accident and by that point, on some level, I think I wanted them to."

"So I just... turned off." He shrugs; it pulls at strained muscles, sends dull pain shooting down his arms and back. "And when it was over-- everyone respected me, after. No one fucked with me anymore. They didn't know. They didn't have any idea. 'Take a page from Warren, Warren doesn't crack'. Like I did something brave when really I just-- I was just stupid and stubborn. They shot the kid when they came to get me, you know? I could have just talked, and he'd still be alive."

"It was all a lie; a fraud. It got me my first promotion. CAG was real interested after that. They didn't know it was my fault."

"John," Harold whispers, petting his cheek slowly, firmly. "I need you to listen to me, now."

He looks sad. John frowns. He didn't mean to make Harold sad.

"It was not your fault. _None_ of it was your fault. Not the torture, not the boy. There was _nothing_ you could have done."

"I could have talked," John protests. "All they wanted was--"

"Your name, I know." Harold's face crumples. "John. You were on patrol. You were _in uniform_." His hand slides gently down John's neck, thumb skating over his collarbone, his sternum. "They had your _pack_. Do you understand?"

John shakes his head, turns away to press his face hard into the pillow. He doesn't-- he can't-- _no_

_clinking against the springs, tight across his throat--_

"John," Harold says against his face, terribly soft "you were wearing your dog tags. _They already had your name_."

John shakes his head again, trying to burrow down into the bed where there's no sound, no roaring in his ears, no words-- _Warren, John S., AB NEG, 378 21_ \--

"Do you understand?" Harold asks, holding him close "They already knew. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that you could have done. You were helpless. It wasn't your fault."

It slots into place like a key, filling a gap he didn't even know was there. This thing he had forgotten-- this thing he had refused to know, a magic trick that when revealed changed everything-- he shakes as it ripples through him, arranging pieces, giving new form to the crooked, stale structures that he's held himself up with for so many years. It feels like the ground is crumbling and there's nothing beneath him but infinite space, a senseless yawning void and he falls and falls and falls--

Harold's hand curls against the back of his neck, holds on tight. John realizes his own hands are clenched in the fabric of Harold's shirt, clinging helplessly. Helpless. He was helpless. There was nothing he could have--

"I've got you," Harold says, warm and fierce and certain. "I've got you now. It's going to be all right."

John tucks his face into Harold's neck and breathes, and breathes, and believes him.  
  



End file.
